


Mother of Mountains and Mares

by everyperfectsummer, nimblermortal



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Female Friendship, Gen, No one we care about dies, Podfic Length: 20-30 Minutes, firmly in the murder ballad genre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-07-19 06:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19969507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/pseuds/everyperfectsummer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimblermortal/pseuds/nimblermortal
Summary: When Kel interrupts Vinson attacking Lalasa, she refuses to let the matter go unanswered; and knight training offers a one-size-fits-all answer to any problem.Podfic link included!





	Mother of Mountains and Mares

**Author's Note:**

> Produced for podtogether 2019 from the general inspiration of murder ballads; we hope you enjoy!
> 
> Content warnings for: canonical sexual assault, themes of sexual violence, systemic failures to address it. No sexual harm is explicitly described, but it is a central theme of the story. Murder plans are described in detail, although the death itself is not.
> 
> Please take care, and don't force yourself to read if you'd rather not. Further content warnings available upon request.
> 
> The fic starts about 2/3 of the way through Page, with some text taken directly from the same, so if you recognize any lines, that is why! If you recognize that they aren't in the correct order, this is a fic, which is also why!

## Streaming Audio

## Downloads

  * [MP3](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2019/MMM_P1-4_v6.mp3) | **Size:** 37.6 MB | **Duration:** 26:06

  
---  
  
> “Don’t _tell_.” She wiped her eyes. “They’ll talk until I’ve no reputation, that’s how things are in servants’ hall.” She hung on to Kel with both hands and lowered her voice. “Nobles can make a girl’s life a misery -- they always do. Please don’t report this!
> 
> “He must be reported,” she told Lalasa quietly. “He’ll do it again.”
> 
> “Please, my lady", pleaded Lalasa, “put yourself in my shoes! You’ll get me in trouble. His kind can make it hard for servants. He speaks to his mother, who speaks to the chamberlain, who speaks to a steward, who puts my uncle out of work. How will you know it was done? How will you know it even came because of this? In two years you’ll be gone, and Uncle and I will still be here. _Listen_ to me.” -- Protector of the Small, Page

Kel looked at the sparrows, hopping around the window and cheeping in outrage, and thought. Lalasa was right. Kel could meet the bullies as their peer because their targets were their peers, too. Merric had forgiven her for interfering, but he had still been humiliated when she’d helped. His pride had suffered, not his reputation or his prospects or his treatment by his peers, but it had still been a lesson that help itself could harm. And all of this, really, had been a lesson in how important folk held station and virtue alike.

Challenging him would hurt Lalasa more than Vinson, and do precious little to help her or anyone else. As for reporting him…a minor noble’s word against a Genlith meant little, a servant’s less, even to the Goddess’s temple, and the temple only had to protect women from this violence because the magistrates would not. She could have taken this to Lord Wyldon, as a page under his training complaining of a fellow page, but. He was a good man, she’d always thought. But he seemed to think “man” meant “good,” as well, and he’d never protected anyone from his trainees before. He might do something, just as the magistrates or the priestesses of the Goddess might. But going to any one of them would put Lalasa at risk for certain, reputation and retaliation.

_She’ll still be here, and I’ll be gone, and he’ll be gone even sooner._ Except that he was mostly gone already, wasn’t he, a squire and not a page, and Lalasa wasn’t the only woman in the pages wing, much less the world. Gone from here did not mean gone, did not mean he couldn’t hurt, just meant he couldn’t hurt here. And she’d been right, too, when she said he’d do it again. There was a reason Yamini women trained with weapons, and that wasn’t enough, not always. (And sometimes women themselves were the threats). 

As Kel had just seen, she couldn’t be everywhere. She couldn’t be everywhere at once, couldn’t protect everyone from all violence, let alone all harm. If Peg hadn’t fetched her from the library, she wouldn’t have been here in time to protect Lalasa from one squire.

But she had joined training because she believed that one person could make a difference, could tip the scales between help and harm in people’s lives. She had meant to be a knight, tipping that scale towards help, towards protecting people. But Vinson was a person too. He could change lives as much as she, and not all changes were for the better.

Neal had said her anti-hazing reasoning was the best lecture on chivalry he’d ever received. She believed it, in the part of her heart that was always a mountain, that they couldn’t suddenly practice chivalry as knights if they didn’t as pages and squires. And. She couldn’t protect her fellow pages and not protect her fellow women any more than she could aim to protect people in future and not protect them now.

That didn’t mean that there was no way to help.

“Alright,” Kel agreed, gaze moving back from her flock to her friend. “I won’t report him.” Lalasa held onto her arm, not letting go.

“My lady,” Lalasa said, half statement, half doubt. She knew her mistress well by now, knew enough to tell when she would not let a thing go.

“I won’t report it,” Kel said, voice as steady as the fortress she would one day build. “But I won’t let him do it again.”

“..How?” Lalasa asked, voice as tight as her grip.

“Everyone says knighthood’s not all songs and stories,” Kel said. “And I think honor’s more than just pretty words, but Mithros knows sometimes I’d love to be a song.” She started humming, steady gaze never leaving Lalasa’s.

Lalasa’s face slackened in understanding, and she likewise slackened her grip on her mistresses’ arm.

They stood there for a few moments in a silent tableau, eyes meeting in understanding neither would dare say aloud, until Lalasa broke the silence.

“If you want to be a knight from song, milady,” she said, face somehow more serious than her glum default, “I’ll help.”

“You don’t have to help,” Kel said, “I won’t report it, and can do it myself.”

Lalasa met her eyes for a long moment, looking as much into the potential futures ahead at Kel. “When he grabbed me, I hoped you would come,” she said, her voice thick. “I’d no right, but I hoped. And you did!” 

“You have every right,” Kel said, patting her awkwardly. “I’m honour bound to protect you.”

Lalasa waved Kel away, shaking her head. “I never knew anybody who’d fight for me, never. When my bro- a man, a man hurt me, when I was little, and my parents said I lied. He was more important to them. But you-you faced down a noble for me! Since I’ve come to your service, I never felt so safe. Like as not I’d be safer if you did this alone, but. I’d feel safer. I need to.”

Kel nodded. “All right, then. All right.” She paused. “Best start planning, then.”

* * *

Kel wanted to become a knight to do good things. Lalasa wanted her life to be a good one. Maybe it would have been different, if Lalasa’s family had lived. If they had been kinder. If she had not learned first hand just how truly some people’s deaths could make the world a better place. and Kel…no matter how many ceremonies and codes of conduct surrounded the path to knighthood, it was always, at its core, training to kill.

Here’s the important part: they were both good. And in its own way, that can be terrible. They were both kind, and they were both gentle, in their own ways; but so was the Great Mother Goddess, and hers were the warrior priestesses as much as the gentle mothers. Sometimes, those were the same women.

Lalasa checked around. Other servants in the pages wing. Servants in other parts of the palace, distant peers and superiors alike. Lower ranked servants, surprised at the attention from a personal servant, some resentful, some happy to talk. People in the market, in the shops, in the street. In the temple of the mother goddess, or waiting to go in, or nervous, and trying to decide. She didn’t outright ask anyone, but she listened to everyone who might know something about the heir to the coin-purse of the realm. Everyone who might have something to say. And some of them said it.

It was Kel’s turn next, to talk. To listen. To find out where the next training camp will be, and the conditions. She’d always been studious, compared to her peers. The last one to stay looking at the diagrams of a battle, the first one to start sketching out alternative possibilities. It wasn’t odd, when she went to the library to examine maps of the pages frequent riding places, anymore than was odd when she spent hours one weekend sitting in Peachblossom’s stall, taking notes for her homework, blending in with the straw. Just another girl gone soft for her horse, and everyone there knew why she got him. And of course her notes were homework. What else would they be? Why would you check?

There’s an obvious way to kill a knight and make it look like an accident, and it’d work as well (if not better) for a squire. Wyldon always told them that a knight’s biggest weakness was ‘his’ equipment. Vinson along with Joren and the rest had tried to use that against her, and it had worked until it didn’t, but a horse was as much a weapon as a lance, and much more variable. It would be easy, to spook his horse. Drug, or even injure her. Easy, but wrong. She would move mountains to protect the innocent; she would not sacrifice a mare.

In the end, she doesn’t have to. She is as harsh on her saddle as her clothes, and, like her pocket linings, the stitching on her saddle is another’s task to complete. Wyldon wants the pages to be self sufficient in the field, to be able to find food in the harshest of climates, fashion shelter from the contents of their saddlebags if they could find none themselves. And maybe laundry done in a stream was still laundry, rabbit roasted on a fire was still cooking, but it was survival, not women’s work. (Funny that women doing it made it unessential.) But the cloth that women wove and spun still went into the field. From page to knight, they never went into battle without stitches.

The clothes do not make the man, but they do make the range of motion. A few centimeters here and there wouldn’t be noticeable. They were pages, which meant eating and exercising and shooting up like weeds. Clothing that was slightly tighter around the joints seemed normal, even to the wearer. Unnoticeable in their slight impediments, except a for moment, days later, when he was frantically trying to take control of a horse. when he tried to fall the way the Shang warriors had drilled into them for years, only to fail.

A fall from a horse is serious enough; he would almost certainly have died anyway (as was, after all, the plan). But it never hurts to be careful. Take equipment maintenance, for example. Sadles are leatherwork, naught to do with personal servants or seamstresses. They still have stitches. They still rule the rider as much as the reverse. They can still make a life or death difference.

Lalasa’s sewing would one day be recognized throughout Corus after her commission for the queen. Her fame would wane, but her skill would continue to grow throughout her life.

Even back then, it was still extraordinary.

Anyone can sew a saddle badly. It takes skill to sew it just badly enough.

Just as much skill, in fact, as it might take to train sparrows to herd and harry a snake. they were prey birds, after all, not matter how brave. but they were also too large for some to eat, and smart enough to know the difference between a threatening snake, and one as close to safe as snakes could get. Smarter, in this aspect, then some horses.

On the other hand, it takes remarkably little skill to weaken leather. Enough salt water added enough times is enough to ruin any tanner’s work, although like as not any rider worth their salt could see the damage at a glance. A little bit added seldom is not enough to raise suspicions as to sabotage (Saddles get damaged in use, after all. That’s how they work); still enough, if you’re careful, to weaken it enough to give way under serious strain.

And it was, after all, each squire’s own responsibility to maintain.

* * *

They weren’t in the palace together for long, him now a squire, following his knight where he led, but they still went on excursions all together ‘atimes, for training.

They were three days into the trip when sparrows came cheeping across the path, following a snake. Followed by, the squires and pages all thought later. They were birds. It must have been followed _by._ They must have been seeking safety as best they knew, hiding with the girl who’d always fed them. The girl whose horse was sullen and spirited and disinclined to rear over a mere snake, especially after training with them for near a week. Bad luck that Vinson’s horse was behind her, that his saddle slipped as his mount reared, that he fell less gracefully than they’d been taught. That he’d clearly been a little careless with his saddle care, and so not just fallen but slipped.

Bad luck, too, that three days into the trip meant three days away from palace level medical care, with that Queenscove lad the closest thing to an expert. Not that anyone could have saved him (and they were both glad that Neal didn’t need to feel guilty about not being able to heal him), he died so fast. Just one bit of luck after another, all bad, all tragic, of course, but nobody’s fault.

Not that it wasn’t blamed on Kel, The Girl, the upstart who’d divided the training masters attention, distracting him from his _real_ charges. Who’d scorned the gentry and the gentle mother alike, and brought bad luck down upon them all. Joren’s parents would not be the first to scream at her for killing their boy.

But no amount of blame in the hearts of the courts conservatives could yield punishment for mere proximity to a tragedy, and be it an accident inflicted by the gods for his behavior, or her presence, or bad luck alone, it was only ever a tragedy. In the end, there was room in the hearts of those who loved him for grief more than blame.

Kel was the first one of the pages to bring flowers to his grave. He had not been her friend, or ever been kind, but flowers were girly and she was The Girl. A servant girl came with her, to help hold the flowers. They were not alone. None of the commoner girls he’d hurt came, but some other servants did. So did a priestess, whose conscience he’d steadily haunted though they’d never met. Other nobles came, including his family. Including servants who truly cared about him.

The true mourners recognized all comers as grieving but there was another group there who recognized their kindreds spirits. Who recognized those who wept in relief, as well as grief. Who recognized that some of the grief was for themselves.

Some of them didn’t notice, thinking themselves the lone fake in a grieving crowd. But they’d needed to see his grave regardless. They’d needed to be certain.

* * *

Lalasa opened self defense classes after moving to the lower city, for those who might need it. Who might not have the friends or the power or the wanting to act as she had. She opened sewing classes, for those who might need a career, or just a short-term source of money while they got out and away and safe. She taught both until the day she faced the Black God’s judgement, and he offered no punishment for what she’d done.

The chamber never met Vinson but through memories, and found it all in Kel’s ordeal. Looked at what she’d done to him, and why, and charged her with a quest: to do the same again. To disobey crown and country in service of each, but most of all, in service of protecting the small. She went to the border, and used axe and sword and steel to save those who called her “Mother,” and was always more weapon than gentle and always a woman.

Anyone in all Tortall, and half the Eastern Lands, can tell you that the first Lady Knight of the modern era was by the gods, blessed with magic and a companion and quests, champion of the Mother Goddess herself. They all know the next one wasn’t, had no gift besides grit and championed none except the needy. They’ll all tell you that the Goddess never blessed _her_ with her hand.

At Vinson’s grave, as the mourner’s gather, a women watches from the gate. She waits, and then walks up, just after the girl page and her servant leave their flower. She leaves her own offering of roses, the same color as her lips, and weeps no tears and speaks no eulogies.

If she had, perhaps the mourner’s would have heard the call of the huntress, and the baying of hounds.

But she said nothing, and past out of the grave yard unremembered and unremarked on. Just as unnoticed, perhaps, as all through the Eastern Lands would tell you a servant is to a goddess. And perhaps only slightly less noticed then the second Lady Knight.

**Author's Note:**

> Songs used in this podfic, in order of appearance:
> 
> -[The Hanging Tree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3hTW9e20d8)  
> -[Earl Had to Die](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw7gNf_9njs)  
> -[Willow Tree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqmZmr9bgi8&feature=youtu.be)  
> -[Long Black Veil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F-4rY4g4Do)  
> -[Fair Annie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch9I3G2JJ08)  
> -[Two Black Cadillacs/Jolene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv4Rb2ArJRs). For this one, I also owe some credit to the [Couch Covers Duo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGAAvm8kocg) remix for the beat they used; but the filking is all mine.
> 
> All music was performed by Nimblermortal.


End file.
